Lost Anti-Porn Film ‘Pages of Death’ Rediscovered in Oregon

You might think of the ’60s as the decade of free love, but it was also a time for horribly misguided films about how dirty magazines cause violent crimes. Fortunately, the Oregon Historical Society has uploaded a recently rediscovered short film by the Citizens for Decent Literature to remind you of those simpler times.

Here’s one scene from the film:

Two private investigatorsrummage through a drawer in the private “den” of an adolescent boy named Paul. They discover a secret stash of magazines.

Last Tuesday, the Oregon Historical Society shared this formerly “lost film” on their YouTube channel, writing in the description that “a faded 16mm print was discovered in the Moving Image collection” last year.

Ominously titled Pages of Death, the film relates a fictionalized investigation into the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl named Karen Fleming, her story bookended by heavy-handed narration from retired football star (and anti-porn crusader) Tom Harmon.

Instead of blaming the perpetrator in the story—the quiet son of a stern city councilman—both the detectives and the narrator suggest that the guilt lies squarely with print pornography:

In fact, the film barely focuses on Paul (the rapist and murderer) at all.

When the detectives chip away at his alibi, he makes this relatively emotionless confession: “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why.”

One detective takes a magazine from Paul’s hands, says, “I think we do, Paul,” and tosses it onto the floor with disgust as the contrite boy weeps.

The film’s penultimate scene shows the cops confronting the clerk who sold Paul the guilty magazines, accusing the cashier of selling “smut that we wouldn’t allow in the city jail because it’s too strong for hardened criminals,” thereby teaching children that “it’s okay to try perversion just for kicks!”

Finally, narrator Tom Harmon chimes in again to explain how magazines fuel the “sex mania” epidemic responsible for rising rates of rape and murder.

“Statistics show that sex crimes have increased in the same ratio as the obscene publication racket. J. Edgar Hoover has said, ‘Sex-mad magazines are creating criminals faster than we can build jails to house them.’ 75 to 90 percent of obscene material ends up in the hands of children.”

His solution? Write a letter to The Hour of St. Francis in Los Angeles, Calif., asking how to “stem the tide of filth” in your neck of the woods.

After redditor vertexoflife shared a link to the film with Reddit’s History community, commenters criticized the film for its exaggerated claims:

However, for the few hypothetical viewers who wanted to see more short films by the Citizens for Decent Literature, it turns out there are at least two other contemporary propaganda pieces released just a few years after Pages of Death.